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Staircase Studios will make $500,000 movies using AI to reduce budgets. Its debut, The Woman With Red Hair, has a five-minute preview which is in no way terrifying.

In the near future, directors will be able to produce “near-studio-quality” movies for just $500,000 – all thanks to the advent of AI. This, at any rate, is the bold claim of Staircase Studios AI, a newly-announced company which uses its own software, ForwardMotion, to generate footage. Founded by Hollywood producer Pouya Shahbazian, the company will, it says, be able to make these films for $500,000 or less.

As proof of this, Staircase has uploaded a five-minute preview of its debut movie, The Woman With The Red Hair. The film itself sounds worthy enough: based on a Black List script by Michael Schatz, it’s about a young Dutch woman who, in the midst of the Second World War, joins the resistance.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,...

Staircase Studios AI, a new maker of films, TV series and video games, is promising to deliver “near-major-studio” levels of quality at budgets under $500,000.

The new company was founded by Pouya Shahbazian, producer of the Divergent franchise. With input from Brett Stuart, Head of AI Filmmaking, Staircase has built a proprietary AI workflow called ForwardMotion, which the company says “revolutionizes the process of studio filmmaking.”

The studio says it will aim to produce more than 30 projects in the next three to four years, with photorealistic results. (Take a look at the first film in the video above and read on to see more film and TV titles on the company’s launch slate.)

“Near-major-studio-quality releases” will be the goal, a press release from Staircase said, at budgets under $500,000.

Joining the company as a partner and working as the lead investor in the venture is Kenneth Lerer, who co-founded The Huffington Post...

Patrick Schwarzenegger auditioned to play Superman.The 'White Lotus' actor submitted a self-tape to take on the lead role for James Gunn's upcoming superhero tale - which eventually went to David Corenswet - but didn't even receive any notes on his try-out.Appearing on the 'Happy Sad Confused' podcast, Patrick was asked: “Have you done more than your share of superhero auditions in your career?”He replied: “No, I haven’t."The 31-year-old star explained his three auditions in the superhero world were for Luke Riordan/Golden Boy in 'Gen V', which he booked, Homelander in 'The Boys', and 'Superman'.Asked if he'd got into costume for the latter, he replied: “No, I don’t think I got any feedback. I think it was like, ‘No, not for you'."Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the 'Staircase' actor has had just two in-person auditions, for 'American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez',...

Patrick Schwarzenegger reveals he auditioned for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie.

While appearing on a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Schwarzenegger was asked, “Have you done more than your share of superhero auditions in your career?”

The White Lotus star quickly replied, “No, I haven’t,” and said the three times he has auditioned for roles in the superhero world include for The Boys character of Homelander, Golden Boy (in the show Gen V, which he booked) and Superman.

Horowitz followed up by asking if he got into costume for this Superman audition, to which Schwarzenegger playfully responded, “No, I don’t think I got any feedback. I think it was like, ‘No, not for you'” and added how the audition was a self-tape.

However, the Clark Kent role ultimately went to David Corenswet, and it all worked out for Schwarzenegger because his audition...

Two years after the first film struck gold at the box office, director Parker Finn is back with Paramount’s sequel Smile 2, which opened wide at the box office over the weekend.

Across 3,619 U.S. theaters, Smile 2 topped the box office and swallowed up an estimated $23 million in its domestic debut, the film’s worldwide opening weekend hitting $46 million.

In addition to hitting the #1 spot on the domestic box office charts, Smile 2 also opened higher than its predecessor. Back in 2022, Smile opened to $22.6 million in the United States.

The first Smile movie went on to scare up $217.4 million worldwide, a number that Smile 2 hopes to reach – and surpass – in the coming weeks. The budget for Smile 2 was a reported $28 million, a bit higher than the first film’s spend, and it will turn a profit in a matter of days.

Meagan Navarro raves in her...

Naomi Scott (Aladdin) leads the cast of returning director Parker Finn’s upcoming horror sequel Smile 2, and Paramount has debuted the brand new official trailer this morning.

Smile 2 opens wide in theaters October 18, 2024. Watch the new trailer below.

In Smile 2, “About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events.

“Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.”

The cast for Smile 2 also includes Kyle Gallner (Smile), Rosemarie DeWitt (“The Staircase”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus”), and Dylan Gelula (Dream Scenario), alongside Raúl Castillo (Army of the Dead) and Miles Gutierrez-Riley (The Wilds).

The new trailer also reveals that Drew Barrymore will appear in the upcoming sequel.

Stay tuned for more on Smile 2.

A planned series in DC’s Batman universe centered on Arkham Asylum is not moving forward at Max for now, Deadline has confirmed.

The potential Arkham series was being overseen by The Staircase creator Antonio Campos, who was showrunner-executive producer and also a director.

We hear that the project is not necessarily dead. Campos had signed onto the series under the previous DC regime, before James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Films.

In a similar way, as Deadline revealed exclusively last month, Blue Beetle is set to continue via an animated series building on the movie, which was developed under DC Studios’ previous regime, but will divert from telling the same story. Instead, the show will create its own story which, in success, could potentially lead to a return to the big screen for the giant blue bug portrayed by Xolo Maridueña.

Gunn had confirmed late last year...

Paramount’s hit horror movie Smile gets a sequel this Halloween with returning director Parker Finn’s Smile 2, which centers on a pop star targeted by the franchise’s curse.

Naomi Scott leads the cast of Smile 2, which arrives in theaters on October 18, 2024. We’ve been waiting for the marketing campaign to begin… but maybe it already has…

Bloody Disgusting has spotted a billboard on Sunset Blvd. this week promoting a new album from the musician Skye Riley, with the words “Skye is limitless” plastered across an image of a woman’s lower face. We’re not aware of any actual musician who goes by that name, so we did a little sleuthing and it seems the billboard is part of a viral marketing campaign.

Our detective work led us to the Instagram account @SkyeRileyNation, which became active just five days ago. Various posts on the page are...

Sophie Turner is breaking her silence about the days following her split from Joe Jonas in September 2023.

The actress sat down with British Vogue to discuss her upcoming series, Joan, the six-part ITV drama that follows the true story of Britain’s notorious jewel thief Joan Hannington. During the conversation, the Game of Thrones star got candid about her split from the Jonas brother and how much she was affected by the reports alleging she was a bad mother who liked to party.

“I mean, those were the worst few days of my life,” Turner told the publication. “I remember I was on set, I was contracted to be on set for another two weeks, so I couldn’t leave. My kids were in the States, and I couldn’t get to them because I had to finish Joan. And all these articles started coming out.”

She continued, “It hurt...

Titanic: A Space Between combines horror and time-travel for an immersive and unique experience on the Meta Quest. Players will explore accurate depictions of well-known areas of the Titanic while solving puzzles and navigating claustrophobic environments. The game switches between perspectives, offering multiple viewpoints of the tragic events and a multi-layered mystery to uncover.

A new VR title, Titanic: A Space Between has a unique premise that is set to cross over two unexpected James Cameron movie ideas. As its name implies, the horror thriller title will take place on the Rms Titanic and let players experience the horrors involved with the Titanic's tragic real-world sinking first-hand.

According to a press release by developer Globiss Interactive, Titanic: A Space Between aims to recreate the Titanic with a high level of accuracy and detail through top-tier graphics that utilize realistic lighting and water systems. To add to the immersion, the game matches the timing,...

It might seem contradictory that the rise of short video clip popularity coincided with the popularity of long form journalism, but Netflix may be the common factor. The streaming network didn’t invent true crime documentation, but it helped shape the style, and keeps a vast repository of the hottest cold cases.

Real-life crime stories are riveting, whether the watcher is concerned about avoiding such events or solving them. There is something for every taste, from feature-length documentaries to full series. Not all crimes are equal under the laws of public opinion, but these are some of the most dangerously addictive true crime offerings currently available on Netflix.

Making a Murderer (2015)

Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi’s 10-part documentary on Steven Avery catapulted Netflix to the top of the True Crime streaming game. Making a Murderer spurred the fascination with the genre more than any other series. Avery served 18 years...

Joe Jonas has officially filed for divorce from Sophie Turner, according to documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Rumors that the couple was headed for divorce began circulating over the weekend when reports that Jonas had retained a divorce lawyer broke, which a source confirmed to People magazine on Saturday. THR has reached out to Jonas’ lawyer, as well as reps for him and Turner.

Shortly after, Jonas was spotted wearing his wedding ring after being photographed without it a couple of weeks before. The musician also posted a photo on his Instagram where his wedding ring was clearly visible amid the rumors.

The reason for the divorce, according to the documents, is that “the marriage between the parties is irretrievably broken.”

The following morning, Turner shared a statement from “the two of us” to her Instagram account, writing, “There are many speculative narratives as to why but, truly this...

Omd — aka Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — are back, and this time, they’re getting political. On Wednesday, the beloved synth-pop pioneers announced their 14th studio album, Bauhaus Staircase, due out October 27th via White Noise. As a preview, they also shared the album’s title track as its first single.

A follow-up to their well-received 2017 album, The Punishment of Luxury, Bauhaus Staircase was forged during the Covid-19 pandemic, and wears the influence of the time period on its sleeve loud and proud. Isolating themselves, Omd’s members dove into their back catalog of unfinished ideas, using them as launching pads to thematically explore the unfolding turmoil of the world.

The lead single, “Bauhaus Staircase,” captures this dynamic, placing lyrics about artistic freedom, 20th century art movements, and “kicking down” fascism in a crescendoing soundscape of drums, synths, and electronic textures. The single also arrived with an animated music video,...

The HBO Max miniseries The Staircase is based on a true story, and The Staircase cast includes an all-star group of actors who look uncannily similar when compared to their characters' real-life counterparts. The four-part series is a dramatic retelling of the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the emotional legal aftermath that followed. In one of the longest trials in the history of North Carolina, Kathleen's husband, Michael Peterson, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for her murder.

The Staircase, like the original 2004 true-crime documentary series of the same name, raises questions regarding what really happened. Michael and Kathleen Peterson seemed to live a normal life in Durham, North Carolina, but when she was found dead at the bottom of their staircase on the evening of December 9, 2001, the tragedy turned their family upside down. The evidence surrounding the case is still heavily debated. As is portrayed in the HBO Max miniseries,...

Toni Collette is addressing the role of intimacy coordinators on set.

The Oscar-nominated star admitted that sometimes intimacy coordinators had made her “feel more anxious” at times during productions. “I think it’s only been a couple of times where they’ve been brought in, and I have very much trusted and felt at ease with the people I was working with,” Collette told The Times UK of working with intimacy coordinators.

“The Power” star continued, “It just felt like those people who were brought in to make me feel more at ease were actually making me feel more anxious. They weren’t helping, so I asked them to leave.”

Collette looked back on her earlier career, saying that intimacy coordinators (which are now an industry norm) bring a “new energy” to crews.

“You never know what you’re going to get and it’s a miracle that a film ever comes together,...

“I had been with ‘The Staircase’ on my own going crazy for a very long time. And so it was great to watch other people become obsessed with it, and sort of like poison everybody else in the room and become the thing they can’t stop thinking about. So I really enjoyed that space,” says Antonio Campos about what it’s like to collaborate with other writers compared to writing solo. We talked to Campos along with Sharon Horgan (“Bad Sisters”), Jen Statsky (“Hacks”), Dan Erickson (“Severance”) and Al Yankovic (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”) as part of our “Meet the Experts” Writers Guild Award nominees panel. Watch our roundtable discussion above. Click each person’s name to watch an individual solo chat.

Erickson had a similar experience, starting “Severance” on his own before a writers room was assembled. But teaming up with others takes time to adapt to.

HBO Max’s “The Staircase” takes a unique approach to the true crime genre: Any dramatization of the case against Michael Peterson — accused of killing his second wife, Kathleen, after she was found dead at the foot of the stairs in their North Carolina home — would have to acknowledge the other “Staircase,” Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s acclaimed 2004 documentary that brought the Peterson trial to the attention of a global audience. But this one incorporates the making of that documentary into its narrative. With Colin Firth as Michael and Toni Colette (in flashbacks) as Kathleen, the series moves back and forth in time, and the secrets of the Peterson family are slowly revealed alongside a depiction of the French documentary crew that followed Michael’s story and ultimately became an integral part of it. The result is a murder mystery less about solving the crime than examining the complexities of the human heart.

This story first appeared in the Emmy Race Begins issue of TheWrap magazine.

The critical response to HBO Max’s limited series “The Staircase” has been overwhelmingly positive. But Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the French filmmaker who directed the Peabody award-winning docu-series of the same name on which the new drama is based, is not participating in the applause.

In a recent interview, de Lestrade told Vanity Fair that he felt “betrayed” by the HBO Max adaptation because he believes it questions his integrity and professionalism. The eight-episode drama tells the story of Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), the crime writer who was convicted in 2003 of killing his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), whom he claims fell to her death on the stairs in their Durham, North Carolina home. (He was retried in 2011 and eventually took an Alford plea.) In addition to chronicling the trial and aftermath, “The Staircase” also features de Lestrade...

The Staircase documentary seemed like the definitive source for all information on the Michael Peterson trial. After all, the documentarians were there in the room, speaking to prosecutors, defense attorneys and the real-life people whose lives were irrevocably changed by the death of Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette). But HBO Max's adaptation of the docuseries is likely to plant new questions in viewers' minds. This is, by the way, totally intentional. Showrunners Antonio Campos and Maggie Cohn want you to question what you thought you knew. Maggie explained to E! News that the whole series questions the "idea that anything can be fully accurate or there could be a single...

The Staircase is based on the real-life story of Michael Peterson, who was initially convicted of his wife’s 2001 murder. Because of inconsistencies in his original trial, though, Peterson has been a free man for over 10 years. However, the man who plays him in The Staircase, Colin Firth, had no interest in meeting Peterson. […]

The post Colin Firth Didn’t Want To Meet His ‘Staircase’ Counterpart appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, is going to play Michael Peterson’s son, Todd Peterson, in HBO Max’s scripted “The Staircase” series.

Patrick Schwarzenegger joins the previously announced Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Rosemarie DeWitt, Juliette Binoche, Parker Posey, Odessa Young and Sophie Turner on the show, which is based on the docuseries of the same name.

This “Staircase” is an eight-episode limited series exploring the life of author Michael Peterson, his North Carolina family and the suspicious death of his wife, Kathleen Peterson.

Firth will play Michael Peterson, while Collette will play Kathleen Peterson. Turner will play Margaret Ratliff and Young will play Martha Ratliff — those are Michael Peterson’s adopted daughters. DeWitt will play Candace Zamperini, Kathleen’s sister who is certain of Michael’s guilt. Posey will play prosecutor Freda Black. HBO has not yet disclosed who Binoche is playing.

In the early 2000s, Michael Peterson...

Welcome to this week’s Smackdown Live review, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and we have Richard Burton and Rex Harrison @!#$?&%/ at each other for two hours about being gay. Yeah, that’s a reference to Stanley Donen’s film adaptation of “Staircase”. I’m watching TCM. What’s wrong with that? I heard this movie sucked. Harrison is a bit over the top, but Burton does well with a character that seems to be almost completely insane…almost. Strike that. Harrison’s character seems insane and Burton’s role is just a jerk. Wait, Smackdown. The delete button is still out of the budget, so “Staircase” stays in the review. Okay, let’s see if Fox is still interested in keeping this show on its roster this autumn.

Match #1: Dolph Ziggler def. Xavier Woods The following is courtesy of wwe.com:

With the animosity between...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Stanley Donen, the legendary director of musicals and romantic comedies, has died at age 94. He started as a choreographer and dance director before being elevated to director status at MGM, where he brought to the screen some of cinema's greatest musicals. Among his achievements: "On the Town", "Royal Wedding", "Singin' in the Rain", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Kismet", "Funny Face" and "Damn Yankees". As the traditional musical genre started to decline, Donen concentrated on comedies such as "Once More with Feeling", "The Grass is Greener", "Two for the Road" and "Bedazzled". One of his biggest hits was the 1963 comedy thriller "Charade" starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which can be described as the best Hitchcock movie not directed by Hitchcock. A similarly-themed spy thriller, "Arabesque" starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, was not as well received. Donen had other artistic misfires in the course of his...

Here’s the latest episode of the 365Flicks podcast, part of the ever-growing podcast roster here on Nerdly. If you haven’t heard the show yet, you can check out previous episodes on Libsyn, whilst we’ll be featuring each and every new episode as it premieres.

365Flicks Podcast: ‘Hitmans Bodyguard’ is on a ‘Rampage’ looking for ‘Gangland Revenge’

The lads are back in the booth for episode 114 and we are getting deep into more movie and TV news and reviews for all you lovely lovely people to listen to. As usual its our particular brand of chat banter and nonsense. News is chock full of surprises this week including Chris getting to find out the Sopranos movie has found its director in the man that helmed Terminator Genisys (Ouch); and Hurricane Toby is back with some exclusive film news…

What have we been watching is next with a run...

There’s a certain amount of obsession inherent in any story about criminal prosecution. When judge, jury, and both sides of a particular case are all paying microscopic attention to each successive details of a mysterious set of circumstance, it’s easy to get lost in those particulars. For projects that look at real-life ambiguities like this — be they films, series, podcasts, or the written word — parsing through piles of alternate explanations is one way to grab an audience’s attention.

Trying to see what everyone else might be missing is an enticing part of that prospect. What “The Staircase” has done over three separate iterations (most recently in three new installments on Netflix) is to track a journey from that initial spark of fascination with “the truth” to something more universal. Framing this particular crime in a new way has meant changing with each successive break in the case at its core.

In 2001, French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film Murder on a Sunday Morning, about the wrongful murder conviction of a 15-year-old black teenager named Brenton Butler. The documentary offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the uphill battle waged by Butler's two public defenders, who fought to prove their young client's innocence against damning evidence – an eye witness's positive ID and Butler's own false, coerced confession.

For his next documentary, de Lestrade wanted to explore how the justice system works for a...

Sophie Brunet, an editor for Netflix’s “The Staircase,” was romantically involved with Michael Peterson, the subject of the docuseries, director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade said in an interview. But he added that it didn’t affect the narrative.

Lestrade told the French news weekly L’Express that Brunet had a relationship with Peterson while working on the series. He was responding to a reporter’s comment that Brunet “fell in love (‘qui est tombée amoureuse’)” with Peterson.

“This is one of the incredible things that happened during those 15 years. Life is really full of surprises. They had a real story, which lasted until May 2017,” Peterson replied. “But she never let her own feelings affect the course of editing.”

Also Read: 'The Staircase': What Happened to Blood Spatter Analyst Duane Deaver After the Case?

He did not say how long Brunet and Peterson were romantically involved, or delve into other details about the relationship.

On the June 4, 2018 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor in chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to talk about what they’ve been watching and what they’ve been up to since last week. You can subscribe to /Film Daily […]

The post Water Cooler Discussion: T-Rex, Downsizing, Wwdc, Westworld, Incredibles, Staircase, Brady Bunch & More appeared first on /Film.

Ron Berkeley, an Emmy-winning makeup artist who worked with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on such films as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Taming of the Shrew, has died. He was 86.

Berkeley died May 9 at the Motion Picture & Television Country Home in Woodland Hills, his family announced.

Berkeley was Burton's makeup guy on about two dozen projects, also including Staircase (1969), Bluebeard (1972), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Equus (1977), The Wild Geese (1978) and the 1980s TV series Wagner.

In addition to Who's...

By Lee Pfeiffer

When I screened this DVD presentation of the much-hyped HBO movie Behind the Candelabra,  about the love affair between Liberace and his young boy toy Scott Thorson, the three people I viewed the movie with unanimously voiced an almost vitriolic response to the film. It had nothing to do with the gay love affair content (they are all dyed-in-the-wool liberals who support gay rights.) Their complaints centered on the fact that the film was boring and pointless and a colossal waste of talent. I was taken aback by the degree of their hatred for this movie but I will concede it was distinctly disappointing. First the background. In 1977 Scott Thorson was a hunky young guy who was introduced to Liberace. They entered an intense relationship that Thorson, in his memoirs, maintained was a legitimate May/December love affair. Before long Thorson had displaced Liberace's previous live-in...

From John Travolta to Bob Dylan, from Ed Wood to Orson Welles: ‘The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time’ (photo: John Travolta in the Scientology-inspired movie ‘Battlefield Earth’) Phil Hall’s The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time, tagged as a "new celebration of cinematic inanity," was published by Bear Manor on August 12, 2013. According to the book’s press release, the Greatest Bad Movies "are the films that inspire wonder" — of a unique variety: "You are left wondering how seemingly intelligent people could gather together and spend money to create such bizarre productions." According to Phil Hall, among the most wonder-inspiring movies ever made are John Travolta’s Roger Christian-directed Scientology-inspired megabomb Battlefield Earth; John Huston’s sort of The Maltese Falcon send up Beat the Devil, starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, and Gina Lollobrigida; Robert Altman’s Health, featuring a classy cast that includes Glenda Jackson, James Garner,...

Rex Harrison hat on TCM: ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ Rex Harrison is Turner Classic Movies’ final "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 31, 2013. TCM is currently showing George Cukor’s lavish My Fair Lady (1964), an Academy Award-winning musical that has (in my humble opinion) unfairly lost quite a bit of its prestige in the last several decades. Rex Harrison, invariably a major ham whether playing Saladin, the King of Siam, Julius Caesar, the ghost of a dead sea captain, or Richard Burton’s lover, is for once flawlessly cast as Professor Henry Higgins, who on stage transformed Julie Andrews from cockney duckling to diction-master swan and who in the movie version does the same for Audrey Hepburn. Harrison, by the way, was the year’s Best Actor Oscar winner. (See also: "Audrey Hepburn vs. Julie Andrews: Biggest Oscar Snubs.") Following My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison...

By Lee Pfeiffer

You don't have to be gay to admire John Schlesinger's 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday, but it probably helps in terms of appreciating just how ground-breaking the movie was in its day. As a straight guy of high school age when the film was released, I do remember it causing a sensation, although it would literally take me decades before I finally caught up with it. Gay friends always spoke reverently of the movie and expressed how the most refreshing aspect of the story was how "normally" a loving relationship between two adult men was portrayed. In viewing the film as a recent Criterion Blu-ray release, I feel I can finally appreciate that point of view. Gay men have long been portrayed in movies, of course, but for the most part they have been depicted as objects of ridicule or as sexual deviants. There were the odd...

My Los Angeles holiday gave me a chance to read The Richard Burton Diaries*, which were published at the end of last year (reviewed at the time in The Guardian here).

One of the fascinating aspects of the diaries was the actor's relationship with journalists. Though he loved to read newspapers, he didn't have much time for the people who wrote them.

He was, as many journalists reported during his lifetime (1925-1984), very friendly towards most of them. He ate and drank with them, and appeared at ease in their company. But, in private, he clearly despised them.

A voracious reader of books and papers, his diaries contain several references to his enjoyment in reading the International Herald Tribune and the British Sunday papers. At one point, he reveals that his then wife, Elizabeth Taylor, loved him to read out stories from the News of the World.

On 11 November 1968, he...

Irish stage and screen character actor who appeared in Barbarella, The Verdict and the BBC's 1969 sitcom Me Mammy

For a performer of such fame and versatility, the distinguished Irish character actor Milo O'Shea, who has died aged 86, is not associated with any role in particular, or indeed any clutch of them. He was chiefly associated with his own expressive dark eyes, bushy eyebrows, outstanding mimetic talents and distinctive Dublin brogue.

His impish presence irradiated countless fine movies – including Joseph Strick's Ulysses (1967), Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982) – and many top-drawer American television series, from Cheers, The Golden Girls and Frasier, right through to The West Wing (2003-04), in which he played the chief justice Roy Ashland.

He had settled in New York in 1976 with his second wife, Kitty Sullivan, in order to be equidistant from his own main bases of operation, Hollywood and London. The...

Our post about gay actors playing straight characters got us thinking about the flipside, straight actors playing gay characters.

But a list of straight actors successfully playing gay would be obvious (Tom Hanks, Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and frankly dull. So we decided instead to sharpen our knives and make a list that's a hell of a lot more fun.

Straight actors who crashed and burned attempting to play gay.

Most of these performances rely on cliche and stereotype, and to be fair, a lot of our favorite gay performances from straight actors do lean heavily on the flamboyant. But actors such as Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family) manage to inject warmth, heart, and sincerity into the theatrics.

These actors, on the other hand, either try way too hard, or not hard enough, and embarrass themselves ... and us.

Mark Adair-Rios and Peter Oldring, Love That Girl

If you've never seen...

On Wednesday, April 21, The Fox Movie Channel in America will present three rarely-telecast films: Prince of Players, an early starring role for Richard Burton as the great American actor Edwin Booth, brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and founder of the legendary Players Club. Later, the network presents the off-beat 1969 comedy Staircase that presents Burton and Rex Harrison in daring roles as two gay lovers. Next is the 1977 box-office hit The Other Side of Midnight that made men around the world groan when a naked woman applies ice cubes to a very strategic area. Check your cable guide for times.